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Growing Opportunities

Today I had plenty growing opportunities. The first thing I did today was completing and correcting the Power Point presentation for tomorrow’s class (it was supposed to be for today’s class, but they came late to class and I used another shorter material), that is aimed to discuss the reading of It’s Hard To Be a Verb! from the cause and effect perspective. This presentation integrates the enduring understanding of the lesson plan: knowing the causes of what we do can help us to change our behavior.

Later I printed, folded and prepared the invitations to our celebration of English Week: the poetry recital of Shel Silverstein’s poem The Voice. Here is an image of the invitation:

When I went to the library for printing I discovered that the school is having a book fair this week. I love book fairs! I was among the first ones to see the available titles. I went to the classroom to tell my fellow student teachers about the book fair and then I went with them to pick some books. I saved some money last week by eating Chef Boyardee at lunch instead of buying food, so I was able to buy three books for my students: one of National Geographic about famous failures, a graphic novel of Shakespeare and a coloring book about the Dalai Lama. These books will be the prizes for the first three places of the English’s week Poetry Recital. I liked the famous failure’s book so much that I wanted one for myself, but there was only one copy left in the book fair. I ordered it and the librarian will tell me on Wednesday if it is on stock. Here are pictures of the book fair and of the books I bought for my students:

At English class, we first talked about how much we all enjoyed the field day, about what we did on weekend and about the English week. This Wednesday they will have trials for the Poetry Contest (only ten students can participate in the final Poetry Recital) and they need to know it for practicing the poem prior that day. Some of them already know it! I showed them how to recite a poem by reciting myself a poem that I wrote when I was in high school for reciting it in my graduation. The poem is in Spanish, but it works to show how a poem can be recited. The poem is titled Desideratum. I recited it to my students by memory because I still remember how I recited it when I graduated from high school:

Yo creo en mis sueños

Vivo, lucho por ellos.

Cada instante en vuelo

Me remonto alto al cielo.

Ser estrella es mi fin

Siempre seguir, vivir

Proseguir, feliz ir,

Cual el viento existir.

En mi ser tengo fe

Hallo fuerza y poder

Yo digo “lo lograré”

Todo, sé lo podré.

Me Abrazo a Su mano

Y de Él yo me fío

El camino trazado

Recorreré sin desvío.

Sea bueno, sea oscuro,

Será lección, será paso

Cuando llegue el futuro

No miraré el ocaso.

Mis ojos contemplarán

El albor de otros sueños

Y alas me surgirán

En pos de sus destellos.

Con el alma engrandecida

Y el espíritu aventurero

Emprenderé nuevas vías

Recorreré nuevos senderos.

Mas mi corazón aquí queda

Entre sueños y quimeras

Ya mi niñez se aleja

El futuro me espera.

Cuando mire hacia atrás.

Y vea el camino andado.

Mi alma con gozo gritará.

“Lo logré, he triunfado”.

After talking about the Poetry Recital, we discussed some vocabulary words of the reading and some details of its story elements. They wrote in the white board the words they didn’t understand and we learned their meanings together. There was a word that was particularly problematic: the word “sitter”. They all thought it was a person who cares a child, like in “baby sitter”. However, in the story it means something else. I asked them to read the sentence where that word that used to see if they could discover the word’s meaning with its contexts. They read the sentence and they were able to discover the word’s meaning: in this story, “sitter” means “chair.”

I was supposed to be interviewed last week by the professors of the Differentiated Education master degree as part of my process of admission, but then the power outage happened, the Faculty of Education student dean told me that all the activities were cancelled and I left the University without being interviewed. They called me later to let me know that they would be making the interviews in another place, but when I got their call I was too far away to come back to the University. Well, after today’s class that interview was rescheduled for tomorrow at 3:00 pm. I will take it as another growing opportunity, no matter if they admit me or not.